OUT OF TIME

Follow along with the Chronicle as we document the saga of one Houston man as he and his family try to fight to keep him in the country.

How do undocumented immigrants pay taxes?

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

The question of how undocumented immigrants pay taxes is often asked in the debate over immigration. One reader wrote to us and said he does not believe undocumented immigrants like Juan Rodriguez, the subject of the Chronicle's Out of Time series, can legally pay taxes. Or, if they do, it's only by obtaining illegal tax Social Security Numbers or other tax IDs.

Juan Rodriguez files taxes with an SSN issued in his name that specifically says “Valid for work only.” It's a temporary card that cannot be used for any other purpose but work with an authorization of the Department of Homeland Security. The photo shows Rodriguez´s work authorization, renewable every year.

Photo: Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle

For federal income taxes, said Abby Eisenkraft, the CEO of Choice TaxSolutions Inc., "the IRS will treat an undocumented person living in the United States the same as a U.S. citizen or resident."

That person "is treated as a resident for tax purposes, regardless of immigration status," meaning that "the undocumented person is responsible for filing a federal and state tax return where applicable," said Eisenkraft.

Although as a general rule undocumented immigrants do not qualify to have a Social Security number, that isn't the only tax payer ID utilized to file federal income taxes.

The IRS created the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) precisely to allow people who cannot have an SSN to still pay taxes. The IRS has issued more than seven million ITINS since 1996. This numbers, which start with the number 9, cannot be used for other purposes. A recent report indicates that in 2013, 4.38 million tax returns were filed with ITINs.

Some undocumented immigrants pay social security and income taxes through fake social security numbers used to secure employment, said Renata Castro, an immigration attorney. Most of the money these unauthorized workers pay never comes back to them in the form of benefits, according to the Social Security Administration.

Undocumented immigrants obtain Social Security numbers by various methods. "Some use the SSN of a family member who is not employed, such as stay at home parents," according to Martha De la Chausse, a payroll tax expert. "Others obtain legal Social Security Numbers from ex-pats, or from the Social Security Office's employees who have access and illegally secure them for profit, or via identity theft, purchasing them on the street illegally."

However, these practices have "become more and more rare as the government imposes tougher enforcement of regulations through e-verify," a digital system that allows employers to verify the work eligibility of their employees, Castro said.

Still, "undocumented immigrants pay taxes to the tune of $12 billion every year in several ways," said immigration lawyer Elizabeth Ricci. "Everyone regardless of status pays the excise tax on things like gas, alcohol and cigarettes; property tax is also paid even by renters, and sales tax."

A few readers of the Out of Time series have expressed alarm that Juan Rodríguez, a native of El Salvador, isn't fluent in English after living in the United States for more than a decade. They see it as a signal that he's not interested in becoming an American.

"A key argument in the immigration debate is that earlier waves of immigrants learned English quickly, whereas today's immigrants show little inclination to do so," wrote Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, in a bulletin for the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank.

However, he added, "Not only is that sentiment incorrect about today's newcomers, but data show that earlier immigrants were not quite the linguistic superheroes we thought."

To prove his point, Anderson quoted studies by professors like Joseph Salmons of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Miranda E. Wilkerson, currently at Columbia College. They have studied the language skills – and tendencies - of immigrants from previous waves.

The following is a Q&A with Salmons:

Some people believe that previous waves of immigrants to the United States who were not native English speakers learned and started using English shortly after they arrived. How accurate is this assertion?

It's true that some groups did, but after almost 15 years of working through data about this question, I'm still amazed at how many people, families and communities remained basically non-English-speaking for generations. Sometimes, this was one or two generations, sometimes longer.

What is the so-called three-generation model for immigrants' English acquisition or assimilation?

It's that immigrants themselves may struggle with English and prefer their native tongues, while their children become bilingual, and their grandchildren learn only English.

Today, we look at more detailed questions, like which language people prefer (children often prefer English, for instance).

What "bilingual" means is also more complex: It doesn't necessarily mean "balanced bilingualism," where people speak both languages equally well. A tremendous missed opportunity in many communities is, for example, helping bilingual children learn to read and write in both languages. This can have big advantages in education. Evidence shows that children in so-called dual-immersion schools are far better at reading English than children in monolingual English schools.

Some groups of immigrants have acquired English faster than others. Could you mention some potential reasons for that?

We have shown that community structure plays a key role: If your community is tight-knit and has strong internal cohesion, it's easier to continue using your native language and to get by without or with less English.

In contrast, it seems clear that if you're not part of a larger community, you have more need to deal with and become part of the English-speaking world.

In general, how difficult is it learning a language for non-English-speaking immigrants? What factors influence the language acquisition?

That depends in part on age and in part on opportunity, but motivation matters, too. It's very clear that it's harder to learn a language as you get older — some evidence suggests after puberty, some after early adulthood, etc.

According to your studies, was speaking English a precondition for patriotic expressions among previous waves of immigrants?

We've found that communities where English wasn't widely spoken were often hyper-patriotic. They held huge celebrations for the Fourth of July and military service was often valued in these communities, for example.

Have English-speaking immigrant communities always been more educated than those who didn't speak the language?

This was one of the surprises for us early on: Schools were very decentralized in many places into the 20th century and were sometimes taught entirely in the community language, without even teaching English reading and writing, let alone speaking.

In Wisconsin, Germans debated around the turn of the 20th century to what extent their children really needed to learn beyond what they picked up in dealing with Anglos. And some of the immigrant groups had much higher literacy rates and better school attendance than Anglos. In other words, some of these immigrants were more literate and educated than English-speaking groups, just not in English.

Why can't an undocumented immigrant married to an American citizen fix his legal status?

Friday, July 7, 2017, 05:00 p.m.

Celia Rodriguez is an American citizen, which led one reader to wonder why her husband, Juan - an undocumented immigrant - couldn't simply win authorization to stay in this country based on his relationship with her.

Another reader said Juan clearly "doesn't care about having citizenship, so send him home" to El Salvador.

It may seem like common sense and in line with the U.S. immigration system's effort to prioritize immigrants with family connections in this country.

But a study recently published in the Journal of Migration and Human Security said there are "many unintended consequences for families, such as lengthy visa backlogs and processing delays, visa restrictions, biased assumptions about family structure, bans on re-entry, and separations due to enforcement practices."

Rather than not wanting to legalize their situations, many undocumented immigrants face particularly difficult challenges.

Raed González, the lawyer in charge of Juan's immigration case, says that one of the regulations that has impacted many families is the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. That imposes penalties for undocumented immigrants who want to legalize their statuses, and the punishment can be years of living away before being allowed to return.

For those who lived in the U.S. illegally for at least one year, the penalty is 10 years abroad. The only way to avoid the penalty is to win a waiver proving that the separation would create extraordinary hardship for spouses or parents.

In general, to be able to get immigration status while living in the U.S., the person must have entered and stayed legally in the country. Undocumented immigrants cannot complete their process of legalization here, regardless of whether they have spouses or parents who are U.S. citizens, González explains.

"Many families cannot afford to have a father away for who knows how many years until they are finally given a legal status, if they are given it at all," Gonzalez says. But being a provider is not enough to pass the test of extraordinary hardship, he says. The lawyer adds that the immigration system "is plagued with inconsistencies, and many times it all boils down to the mood an agent has when he or she is reviewing a case."

Olivia P. Tallet is an award-winning journalist covering Latino issues and culture. She is also a blogger for Calle Houston. Tallet has more than 10 years of experience producing investigative and feature stories focusing on this community and welcomes tips and suggestions for stories related to Latinos.